Re: [Talent-Signal] relating competencies to job postings

On 01/08/2019 03:35, Jim Goodell wrote:
> I agree the structure of skills (or the proposed competencyRequired 
> from the EOC extension) with DefinedTerm/DefinedTermSet works for now.
>
> I’m wondering however, assuming the current work is going to get more 
> organizations doing linked data for Competencies, then it would be 
> better to introduce a more complete Competency vocabulary and get orgs 
> using that, then propose it to Schema.org with evidence that it is 
> already being used. The communities we are connected to are the ones 
> most likely to mark up with more than just a text label for a skill or 
> to publish complete frameworks.
>
> If we work within current limitations of Schema now we lock into an 
> imperfect solution and future breaking changes for implemeters should 
> we ever want to have a more complete solution in the future.
>
> I guess it depends on how much we think the current work will drive 
> practice...It’s a chicken and egg problem and I’m wondering if going 
> with the egg would be best.

Yes, that's a good question.

Am I right in thinking that we are not in the position of wanting to 
create a schema.org-based way of representing the full detail of 
competency frameworks themselves? That is, of building a schema.org 
specification that would allow systems to exchange all the details of 
the competency frameworks they use. My feeling is that there are already 
N specifications trying to do that and having N+1 isn't the way to go.

If that's right, then the question is: what do we want to do with 
competencies in schema.org? I think we want to /refer to them/ in a way 
that lets a system (a) know that they are a competency, (b) show 
sufficient information about them ('sufficient' is open to 
interpretation), and (c) know where to get / point the user to further 
information.

I am confident that using a DefinedTerm satisfies (c). We need a little 
more input to know whether (b) is satisfied.

DefinedTerm also satisfies (a), if we allow for a certain amount of 
inferencing, i.e. 'this DefinedTerm is used as the object of a 
schema.org:skill therefor it must be some sort of competence'. We could 
remove the need for inferencing by suggesting one or two new types, say, 
CompetencyDefinition and possibly CompetencyFramework which would 
initially indicate explicitly that the thing being described is related 
to compentencies and could additionally provide information on the 
competency. For starters I would suggest we would want to know what type 
of competence it is (knowledge, skill, ability, tool/technology, 
personal attribute...) and what standard encodings are available (ASN, 
CASS, CASE...)

Is that an egg worth incubating?

Phil


-- 

Phil Barker <http://people.pjjk.net/phil>. http://people.pjjk.net/phil
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